‘MARIACHI OPERA’ MORE OF A CONCERT WITH A GOOD STORY

Noble attempt to fuse two musical genres is a first step with still a long way to go

It’s remarkable what a frame can do. Put one around a piece of bread, or a depiction of a piece of bread, as Jasper Johns did. Then move it into a museum, and you’ve got art (you can see it at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in its current show, “Lifelike”).

By taking something out of its original context, you completely change the meaning.

Or, to use a musical example, take mariachi music, put it in an opera house, and you have opera.

In the case of “Cruzar la Cara de la Luna,” which the San Diego Opera presented in two “semi-staged” performances Saturday at the Civic Theatre, you have what was billed as “the world’s first mariachi opera.”

The Houston Grand opera devised the concept in 2010, with a book by director and writer Leonard Foglia (he did the same for last year’s “Moby-Dick,” which also originated in Houston), music by José “Pepe” Martinez (whose Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán performed in place of the traditional opera orchestra), and lyrics, sometimes Spanish, sometimes English, by Foglia and Martinez.

“Cruzar la Cara de la Luna” (“To Cross the Face of the Moon”) has played in Houston, Paris and is bound for Chicago. Given the timeliness of the topic and the desperate need for opera companies to connect with diverse audiences, look for it to be presented elsewhere.

How was it? It’s an opera only because it’s in an opera house. Although presented as a fusion between mariachi and opera, there’s relatively little fusing going on.

Essentially, it’s a 75-minute series of mariachi songs, connected by a loose plot about a family whose branches on both sides of the border are finally united through an ailing grandfather’s wish to see the son he left behind in Mexico.

So if you look at it as an opera, you might be disappointed. But considered as mariachi, it was undeniably heartfelt, with distinctive tunes that continued to play in your mind as you left the theater.

An expert cast, accompanied by and sometimes singing along with the Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán, immeasurably aided the presentation. An affecting and strong-voiced Cecilia Duarte anchored the cast. As Renata, the wife the grandfather left behind in Mexico, she seemed to represent all that was good and true. (Still, you wonder what happened to his American wife, whom he married after Renata dies trying to cross the border; her son and grandson are represented, but she’s absent.)

Vanessa Cerda-Alonzo also made a strong vocal impression as Renata’s friend, Lupita, as did several of the more operatic voices in the cast, including Brian Shircliffe as Mark (the son on the American side) and Brittany Wheeler as Diana (Mark’s daughter).

As Diana’s grandfather, Laurentino, Octavio Moreno may have lacked the degree of gravity this family patriarch needed, but he sang with passion and was ultimately convincing in the opera’s final scene, where holding the hands of both of his sons, he proclaims, “this is home” (and, spoiler alert, then he dies happy).